What does assigns mean in rspec

Question

What does that line of code do?

assigns(:articles).should eq([article])

in the following rspec

  describe \"GET #index\" do
         


        

Answer 1

assigns relates to the instance variables created within a controller action (and assigned to the view).

---

to answer your remark in comments, I guess that:

• 1) your index action looks like @articles = Articles.all (I hope you use pagination though)

• 2) prior to the spec block above, you have one article created in db (or I hope you stub db queries in db)

• 1 + 2 => @articles should contain one article, that's your spec expectation